Claud Eustace Teal

Claud Eustace Teal is a fictional character who made many appearances in a series of novels, novellas and short stories by Leslie Charteris featuring The Saint, starting in 1929. A common spelling variation of his first name in reference works and websites is Claude, however in his works Charteris uses the spelling without the 'e'. History Teal was a London-based police detective for Scotland Yard, with which he initially held the rank of Inspector. He first appeared not in a Saint story, but in a 1929 novel entitled Daredevil as a friend of that book's hero, "Storm" Arden. When Charteris decided to launch an ongoing series of stories featuring his Robin Hood-inspired anti-hero, Simon Templar (a.k.a. The Saint) in late 1929, he imported the character of Teal though it's not known if Daredevil plays any role in the actual continuity of the Saint series. (The first Saint story, 1928's Meet - The Tiger!, predated Daredevil and featured a character named Detective Carn, who was a template for the later Teal). Backstory Teal first appeared opposite Simon Templar in several novella-length stories that appeared in the UK magazine Thriller in the spring and summer of 1929; several were published in 1930 as the collection Enter the Saint (which is where most readers were first exposed to Teal), though the earliest stories in the series would not be published in book form until they were rewritten and included in a later collection, Featuring the Saint. At some point, Teal received a promotion to Chief Inspector and he is identified with this rank for the first time in the short story collection The Brighter Buccaneer.